Do Black lives matter? Such a question/concern should never even have to be raised. Can hope exist for real social justice and achievable joyful life, unencumbered by divisions innumerable when people have to declare that their lives matter? Yet, there may be hope if we accept that race is a “social construct” that exists only because we let it.
Racism cannot go away until the belief in race does. If there must be “race,” let there be one “race” — the human race. General semanticists (from Alfred Korzybski to S.I. Hayakawa) advise that humans create categories for convenience and ease of communication. Often these categories benefit only those who create them and can be used as weapons and well as tools. Thus, we live in a society abounding in “labels” applied to various groups and individuals, sometimes with their acceptance, often not.
Consider the delicious freedom of a label-free life. We would all be just humans, absolutely equal, absolutely worthy and absolutely deserving of opportunities to experience certain “inalienable rights.” We would not need to assert that Black lives matter, and we would not be, in the words of a recent letter to the editor, “Marxists who are using race as a vehicle to achieve their political objective, to defeat President Trump” for doing so.
Collin T. Wansor
Hempfield